


How To Deal With Murder

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Brothers [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Murder, Strider Family, boys doing bad shit and totally getting away with it, my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art, the striders are terrifying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 05:29:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13697835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: For everyone who readBeing A Brother Is Hard As Helland wondered what the fuck Bro and D did...here's your answer.





	How To Deal With Murder

TT: Yo. D.   
TT: Tell me you're home right now, big bro. 

TG: its your lucky day 

TT: Ha.   
TT: It's really not.   
TT: I'm in the elevator. I'll be up in a minute.   
TT: You need to get out the first aid kit. 

TG: bro whatd you get into this time? 

TT: You'll see. 

TG: not reassuring 

TT: Yeah. 

You stare at your phone and shake your head, rolling off the couch. Your brother isn't usually this cryptic, unless he's done something he _really_ doesn't want you to know about. That fact, when taken with the fact that he started out by asking for help, means that something's really fucked up right now. 

TG: dude come on whats going on 

No answer. Damn it. 

You have the first aid kit—the heavy-duty one that you put together, not the standard one that's just good for cuts and scrapes—laid out on the coffee table when he comes in. He doesn't slam the door, but carefully shuts it and locks it before coming to sit down. 

"Hey. What happened?" you ask, leaning back to look your bro over. His shades are gone, but he's acquired a leather jacket that you don't recognize. The expression on his face is completely fucking neutral, a calmly blank look that makes him seem a hell of a lot older than nineteen. 

"Hmm." It's a purely noncommittal noise, and it's all the answer you get as he unzips the jacket and gingerly strips it off. _Now_ you see why he's wearing it—his white shirt's ripped at the collar, stained deep muddy red in two spots, one around his shoulder and one closer to his stomach than his chest. 

_Shit._ Shit. Shit. That's a lot of blood. 

"Derrick, we're going to the hospital." 

"Nah. They report gunshot wounds to the cops." He shrugs and hisses quietly at the movement, pulling the fabric of his shirt away from his skin before shaking his head. "And don't fucking call me Derrick...it's ruined anyway; cut the fucker off." 

"Gunshot wounds. What the fucking _hell_? Dude, I can't take a bullet out of you—" 

"There's an entry and an exit, so you won't have to." He sighs impatiently and grabs the scissors off the table, clumsily cutting at the front of his shirt until you take them out of his hands. "Help me bandage this up. That's all you need to do."

" _Derrick._ " 

"I'll kick your ass, D," he warns, and you can tell from the flash of anger in his orange-gold eyes that he means it. He's always hated his name, way more than you dislike yours—you just shortened yours down to its first letter; he'll throw a fit if anyone uses his at all. Something about how pissed he's always been at the parents that foisted him off on you. 

"You wish you could." The wound in his shoulder is a cut, deeper than you're comfortable with handling but not life-threatening. Probably not, anyway. "I'm perfectly capable of knocking you out and dragging your ass to the ER if you don't give me a reason not to. As in, tell me who the _fuck_ I have to kill for doing this to you." 

He laughs at that, one short sharp angry noise that almost scares you into dropping the scissors. "Nobody, trust me." 

"What?" 

Your brother shakes his head again, leans back and closes his eyes as you start wiping blood off his skin. He wasn't exactly accurate when he said there was both an entry and an exit wound; it's more like a furrow cut into his skin, something that's messy and ugly and is definitely going to leave a scar. When you touch it wrong he groans, but he doesn't try to pull back, doesn't even flinch. 

"Bro. Hey. What happened?" you ask again, not even really expecting any more of an answer. 

And sure enough, he just shakes his head. But after a second, he sighs and rolls his head to one side. "Mama...just killed a man..." 

You weren't expecting softly-spoken song lyrics, either. 

As a result, it takes you a moment to process them. 

When you do, though? "You didn't. You fucking didn't, Derrick, what kind of sick joke—" 

"Jesus, D, be gentle." He grimaces and shoves your hands away from his chest, and you actually feel a pang of guilt under the confused horror that's currently doing its best to throw your mind into a blind panic-loop. "It's not a joke. There's a corpse in the back of my truck, wrapped up nice and safe in a tarp, got some trash and shit piled up over it." He sighs and lets his head fall back, hands dropping to his sides. "And a tape from the security system in my jacket pocket. Need to get rid of that." 

"...I don't understand any of this." 

"Good. You don't need to. Just patch me up, I'll handle it all, and you can forget this ever happened." 

"Oh hell no." 

"D, please." He finally opens his eyes to look at you, and for a second that blank mask slips to show that he's in pain, upset, and maybe more than a little scared. It's only a second, but he lets you see it. "I'm _tired,_ this shit hurts like hell—" 

"There's a _body_ in your _truck_!" 

"It's hidden. It's okay for the moment." 

"How is any of this okay?" 

"It'll be okay." 

"Derrick _fucking_ Strider—" 

You know that you probably shouldn't've used his name again as soon as you say it. His mouth sets into a thin, angry line, and he shakes his head, closing his eyes and hunching up. 

"Shit," you mutter, and start hunting through the stuff on the table for what you need to clean him up. 

He doesn't say anything as you disinfect the cut on his shoulder, but halfway through cleaning out the bullet wound he makes a soft, distressed sound. When you look up you see that his eyes are half-open, rolled back so only the whites show. The fact that he's passed out is actually relieving, once you make sure he isn't choking or anything, because you need to try and sew up the giant fucking hole in his skin. 

Which you manage to do. And you only throw up once. This is why you weren't meant to be a doctor. 

He's still out when you finish, so you pick up the leather jacket he was wearing and go through the pockets. The search reveals three plastic baggies—two with a couple dozen pills apiece, and one with some kind of powder that you don't intend to let come in contact with your skin, at all—a folding knife, a cracked flip phone that isn't your brother's and won't turn on, and a tape. 

After a second of thought, you put everything except the phone and the tape back in the jacket's pockets. You pop the back off the former, separating the battery and the sim card before putting all three pieces back in the pocket—that might prevent anyone from tracking the thing or it might not, but no one can say you're not doing your best here. 

Once that's done, you take the tape into the other room, put it in the player, and rewind it. Not all the way—you don't intend to sit through the whole damn thing.

It's from a security camera, all right. Not much else the black-and-white, low-quality footage _could_ be. All it shows is an empty parking lot somewhere, with a time stamp of three hours ago. 

You fast forward until you see your bro's truck, then hit play again. He's still alone onscreen at this point, parking and getting out, walking in slow circles and very obviously scanning for cameras. You can see the exact second that he sees this one, stopping and looking directly into it for a good ten seconds. 

"Damn, bro," you hear yourself whisper. He _planned_ this, didn't he? 

Onscreen, he nods and gives the damn camera a small smile and a wave. ( _Cocky lil' asshole,_ you think, ignoring the thought under that, the one that wants to ask what you're going to do about this shit.) He moves back to his truck, takes the tailgate down and pulls something you can't see closer to the very back, and boosts himself up to sit in the back, crossing his arms and settling down to wait. 

You fast forward the tape again. 

The time stamp advances half an hour before another car pulls in. This one's small and expensive-looking; anybody who actually gave a fuck about cars could probably tell you a lot about it, but you're willing to bet that it's worth more than what you got paid for any two of the screenplays you've co-written. The guy that gets out isn't anyone you know (thank god) but he's a type that you're pretty damn familiar—confident, angry, thinks he owns the fucking world. 

_Drug dealer_ , is your first thought. The baggies from the jacket influence that assumption, but even without that little piece of evidence you probably would've ended up at the same guess. It's just something about that kind of guy. 

You know how to lip-read, a little bit, but the angle here sucks and you can't see the faces of either of the two onscreen. You see your brother shake his head and slide off the tailgate, though. The dealer's hand goes down to his pocket, and you wince and close your eyes. 

When you look again your bro's bleeding, but he's got a goddamn sword. The other guy's on the pavement, his whole face covered in what looks like chocolate sauce and most definitely is not. 

"Fuck." You almost want to rewind and see what the hell your bro did. You're actually reaching for the remote when the guy on the ground twists and reaches to pull something out of the waistband of his jeans. 

The muzzle flash shows up white and grainy, and you hiss as your bro staggers back. _There's_ the gunshot wound, yeah. 

It only slows him down for a second, though. Then he's standing over the dealer, katana coming down in a strike that you can tell is calculated. You count four swings, and he's pulling back for another when you hit the button to eject the tape. 

"Goddamnit, bro." 

"You didn't have to watch that, you know," he says from behind you. When you turn around, he's standing there in the doorway, leaning against it and watching you. "You could've had plausible deniability, dumbass." 

"You told me you killed a guy. Call me Pandora, but I kinda wanted to see if you were serious." 

He rolls his eyes and holds out his hand for the tape. "Great. Now you know I was." 

You don't hand it over. "Who was he?" 

"Doesn't matter." 

"Fucking _tell_ me, asshole. I just got to see you commit pre-fucking-meditated murder, Derrick—you can do me the itty-bitty service of telling me why the hell you did it." Fuck. He really is going to smack you if you keep using his name. 

He stares at you for maybe half a minute, then nods and looks down. "Fine. He's an asshole who fucked with the wrong person, sent a couple people to the hospital and expected he was getting away with it because his daddy's got connections." 

"So you killed someone who's going to end up getting _you_ killed." Fear's rising in your chest again. _Dammit, bro._

"Nah. His old man doesn't give a fuck; isn't going to look too hard for him, unless I'm stupid enough to let somebody find his body." Your brother gives you a smile that's utterly humorless and terrifyingly confident. "And I don't intend to leave anything to be found." 

Fuck. 

"Where's the katana?"

"Wiped down with bleach, snapped in half, the two pieces in dumpsters a couple miles apart." He crosses his arms, mostly keeping the pain that movement causes off his face. "No prints on it." 

"The guy's car?" 

"Right where he left it. I wasn't about to leave evidence in it, and it's not like anybody can place me anywhere near it." 

"How much blood is there in the truck?" 

"None. I brought two tarps, wrapped the bastard in them before I loaded him up." He sighs and straightens up, nodding at the tape in your hands. "I need to go get rid of him, though. Get rid of that for me, alright? Burn the damn thing—I don't want any evidence." 

"You need me to come help you?" If he says yes, you'll do it. You know you will. Your brother's just done literally the worst thing you could've imagined him doing, and you're ready and willing to help him cover it up. 

But he shakes his head and turns away. "Nah. I'll call you if I need you; otherwise I'll be back at some point tonight or tomorrow, alright?" 

That is not, in fact, all right. 

"Yeah. Fine. Be careful, bro." 

He fucking _laughs._

A minute later you hear the door shut, and you sigh and look down at the tape you're still holding. "...fuck." 

You don't know why you do what you do next. He asked you (told you) to burn the tape, but what you do is set it by the TV, find one of your tapes and take it into the kitchen, snapping the casing in half and pulling out the innards of the thing. Out takes a minute to find a metal bowl, set it in the sink and dump half a bottle of rubbing alcohol over it. 

Flares up nicely when you drop a lit match in there, though. Even if it does smell fucking horrible. 

Amazingly, the smoke alarm doesn't go off. You probably need to change the batteries. 

When there's just a homogeneous mass of melted plastic, you turn on the sink and run water onto the mess until there's no more flames. There's absolutely no way to tell which tape you destroyed, just that you _did_ destroy one. 

Unlike most twenty-somethings, you have a safety deposit box. The bank's still open at this point, thankfully, and that's where you go. The tape gets tucked down under a box of papers, and you're back home long before your brother shows up again, the next morning.

When he does, he goes into the kitchen and comes back to the main room almost immediately, flopping down on the couch and closing his eyes. "Thanks, D." 

"Didn't do anything. And neither did you, right?" 

"Yeah. Exactly." 

"Your stitches aren't bleeding, are they?" 

"I'd tell you if they were. You can check that shit out when I wake up, though, alright?" 

"...yeah. Fair enough." 

That's literally all that's said about the whole thing, for the next decade and a half. Contrary to your expectations, it never comes back to bite you in the ass. No one ever shows up to accuse him of anything, he doesn't die from an infection from your amateur doctoring skills. Nothing. 

Like he said, it's all okay.

Except you have a tape of your brother murdering a man. 

Which is...still okay.

He's your fucking _brother._ That means you'll do what you have to to keep him safe. All in all, this isn't that big of a deal. 

(Well. That's what you tell yourself. Makes it easier to mostly forget it ever happened.) 

(Mostly.)

**Author's Note:**

> any technical inaccuracies are the result of me not fucking researching for this. like, at all.


End file.
